Club backs banned fans

A FOOTBALL club is giving £20,000 to help fund a legal challenge by fans against police who rounded them up and sent them home before their team's game at United. Stoke City have offered to pay the money towards costs incurred by 80 supporters who were ordered back to Staffordshire by Greater Manchester Police. GMP has apologised to six of the supporters for branding them hooligans and sending them home.

A FOOTBALL club is giving £20,000 to help fund a legal challenge by fans against police who rounded them up and sent them home before their team's game at United.

Stoke City have offered to pay the money towards costs incurred by 80 supporters who were ordered back to Staffordshire by Greater Manchester Police. GMP has apologised to six of the supporters for branding them hooligans and sending them home.

It has also offered to repay the cost of their match tickets.

But the force won't apologise to the rest of the fans, saying they were bent on trouble when they met at the Railway pub, in Irlam, before the game in November.

The supporters say they spent up to four hours confined to their coaches, and were not even allowed off to use toilets.The force has promised to review how it uses powers to move on alcohol-fuelled trouble-makers.

The fans, backed by the human rights group Liberty, want a judicial review of the police's `illegal' action.

Liberty is using the experience of one supporter, Lyndon Edwards, as a test case.

Stoke City's chief executive Tony Scholes said: "We thought the police's actions were wrong and thought it was only right to back one of our supporters who was challenging those actions."

Malcolm Clarke, chairman of the Football Supporters' Federation , and a Stoke fan, said: "This is a superb gesture. I've never known a club to act like this in support of fans. A police apology is all very well but what we want is recognition that what they did was unlawful."

Police served Section 27 orders on fans, saying they acted on intelligence about violence planned between rival hooligans.

The 2006 Violent Crime Reduction Act lets officers ban people from an area for up to 48 hours if they fear there may be alcohol-related violence.

Assistant Chief Constable Ian Hopkins said: "Further to the apologies that we sent to a small number of people we have since been contacted by Liberty.

"As this correspondence is ongoing and of a legal nature, it would be inappropriate to comment. We have commissioned a review of our use of Section 27 in order to ensure that we use it only when it is necessary and proportionate."